1. Field
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus such as a digital camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an imaging apparatus exemplified by recent digital cameras, a diversified, fast and sophisticated processing is requested in image processing parts of the imaging apparatus with increased number of pixels and increased data amount to be dealt with, and further with fast readout speed of image data from the imaging devices.
In order to meet these requirements, a variety of digital correction processing blocks have been proposed, and the number of the digital correction processing blocks has ever been increasing. Also, parameters (setting values and the like) for driving each digital correction processing block have ever been increasing similarly.
There is a problem that nonvolatile memories used for storing these parameters (setting values and setting information) in the imaging apparatus are comparatively large-sized and expensive. Meanwhile, the imaging apparatus itself is required to be smaller and lighter as a whole. As a proposal to compromise these issues, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H10-174048 (patent reference 1), for example, discloses that parameters (image attribute information) are stored in a serial EEPROM which is a small-sized and inexpensive memory.
However, in a case of using the serial EEPROM disclosed in the patent reference 1, there is a concern that it takes a long time to write in and read out parameters of image attribute information or the like resulting in causing delay in image processing or the like, compared with a case of using a nonvolatile memory with parallel outputs.